Battles Over LEED in the Military Are Still a Distraction

Author name:
Paula Melton
Blog Category:
BuildingGreen's Top Stories
A recent memo hints that the Department of Defense will accept Green Globes certification for buildings—but that was already the case.
It started with a press release from the Green Building Initiative, developer of the online Green Globes tool—“ Department of Defense Recognizes Green Globes for Assessing Building Sustainability ”—and it spread from there to many of our favorite blogs and green building news sites.
The press release claims, “Following the lead of the General Services Administration (GSA), the DoD recently recognized Green Globes as an approved program for DoD facilities.”
Dog bites man
There are two things wrong with this.
First of all, it isn’t news. As we reported in “ 4 Reasons the Battles Over LEED in the Military Are a Distraction ,” DoD has always kept a loose rein on building certification systems. The Army and Navy have pursued LEED aggressively, whereas the Veterans Administration tends to prefer Green Globes. “We didn’t want to lock ourselves into one particular green rating system,” Lt. Col. Keith Welch told us back in March. The United Facilities Criteria (UFC), which is effectively the military’s own building code and was updated last spring, requires LEED Silver or equivalent. “Equivalent,” in practice, has always included Green Globes.
read more